It was only Jay and Rob tonight and they both forgot their characters. So, eff it, we rolled up new characters. Rob rolled up what turned out to be another cleric, Deacon Alia. He decided that she was from a different sect of the same religion of her humanity-worshiping cleric he rolled up previously. Jay ended up with a bad-ass fighter, a former city-guardsman with a gambling problem, Vassaly Kordor.

They were offered the possiblity of joining up with another duo to make a party of four if they were interested. They opted for a brother/sister pair of Specialists, Raya and Adam, who just got back from a crypt up north.

They took a job from Humberto, their union rep. Setting aside a pair of wizards who run rival gangs in the city, they decided on She Wears a Crown of Feathers, a dinosaur goddess with a cult of fallen nobility and crumbling upper crust types. They hoped that this would mean lots of money and they were right.

They knew that ‘Crown of Feathers has a small cult. They sent Adam to follow a pair of the cultists and then they broken into their house and threatened the shit out of them. I rolled their disposition and the husband got a 12, which means Helpful.  Fuck it, a law’s been passed that has declared their goddess a monster and he’s ready to roll over on them. He takes them to a fellow cultist family’s house and gets them past the gatekeeper just long enough for Vassaly to shoot the gate guard in the face.

Essentially, they broke into the family’s house and shot them both. They were using the original cultist’s as cover and the wife got shot, covering Vassaly in gore.

So, the back-story of the game that allows me to run city dungeon-y crawls is that the city of Marsui once had an open door policy for monsters. That law was revoked and now the Adventurer’s and Salvage Union has full rights to kill these monsters. Here’s where things get hazy. The monsters are otherworldly and inhuman (wizards, demi-gods, vampires, constructs) but the law states that anyone who aids them is also legally a monster.

This was hazy territory in a new, largely untested law that was only on the books for a week. They called their union rep and he called the union barrister. The barrister called a magistrate. The magistrate gave it all a green light, right there in the middle of the night.

They used the considerable silver they pulled from the cultist family to hire 30 musketeers for a day and armor up a bit. They also offered triple pay if the goddess falls.

They blew up the door of the dinosaur goddess’ temple with a barrel of black powder, attempting to drawn her out into the musket-fire. She was invisible in the middle of the temple and then she blew out one of her own walls, giving her a new exit that they had not anticipated  Raya and Adam got wounded and Alia had to heal herself a bit but other than that they were okay as the musketeers started to mobilize to take fire on the new side exit in the temple.

But Wears a Feathered Crown came around the other side and was in the middle of the musketeer mercs before they could fire and bit their sergeant in half. And in the critical roll of the game, they made their morale roll just as Vassaly hit her from a distance with a nat 20 rifle-shot, letting loose the battle-cry, “Triple-PAY!”

The Muskets were supposed to let loose their fire in 3 volleys of 10 but that was before a dinosaur goddess bit sarge in half. I rolled 30 d20’s on my phone’s dice roller app. She Wears a Feathered Crown fell dead, filled with musket balls, having taken a few shots from the adventurers on their way in and out of the temple.

I had rolled 4d20 x 100 for her money, as she come up as moneyed, so it was 5000 silver, along with a battle with an 11HD beast and there we were.

Deacon Alia leveled up and Vassaly surely will do so next game. With their XP from their crypt run up north, I bet their NPC Specialist friends leveled up too. I’ll keep them for future NPC’s.

That was fun.

Thoughts:

• I looked over the summoning table more carefully and will use some bits from that for future Marsui-approved monsters.
• They ended up with a ton of money, which is fine and fun. They took the risks, their plan paid off.
• I want to put together some Union-approved equipment packages so that we can make chargen even faster.
• Drawing all over maps is fun. I had a good map of her temple but I need to print out some city geomorphs for future games.
• I like how we’re slowly making up these different sects of Rob’s Humanity Church. Alia’s holy symbol is an open palm, fingers down and there are different hand symbols for different philosophies.
• Jay gave some decent weight to Vassaly killing people, which was nice. He wasn’t a cold, killing machine. Thank goodess because morally, this whole set up is kind of terrible and I’m just not thinking about any kind of metaphorical greater meaning that comes with declaring your neighbors as un-people for their religion and beliefs but…oof.
• EDIT, two days later: The game really came down to two key roles. 1) the cultist’s reaction roll. The double 6’s that made him friendly changed the course of the game. Then the mercenaries made their morale roll and fired 30 shots at the Dinosaur Demi-Goddess. The players made good plans, took solid action and nickeled and dimed her, taking out her supporters for that key moment. Good stuff.